Round Two

Several years ago, I came across a webbed document
that purported to refute my view of the history of saga period
Iceland, apparently written by someone (or ones) who knew almost
nothing about Icelandic history. The result was an entertaining
exchange,
in the course of which the document was revised
to eliminate the most striking historical (and other) errors,
although still without providing any evidence for its central
thesis.

The second round started in December 2000. I had
noticed several posts which asserted that my views on Iceland were
conclusively refuted by scholarly work done since I
published--without actually providing any cites to back the
assertion. I finally decided to answer one of the posts. The result
was an exchange in which the poster demonstrated considerable
ignorance of Icelandic history and Norse literature, although he
seems to know a good deal about Norwegian history. I decided it would
be worth webbing it, so here are the relevant posts:

Original
post by Douglas Muir, asserting that no
serious historian accepts my view of Icelandic history any
more.

My
response, pointing out that whether or not
my views are true, his claim that nobody takes them seriously any
more is contradicted by readily available evidence.

His
response, which provides no evidence on
the truth of my views, just arguments purporting to show that nobody
takes them seriously.

My
response to that, partly on whether anyone
takes me seriously, partly on the nonexistence of posts he claimed
that he had made and I should have seen--which he later conceded were
actually emails--but beginning to deal with substantive matters as
well, in particular with:

His
response to someone else, in which he not
only makes a string of false assertions but makes them with great
confidence. This is the point at which it begins to become clear to
me that he really doesn't know what he is talking about.

His
response to my comments on that, in which
he concedes that what he claimed was in Egilsaga wasn't and then
tries to support his claims about Iceland in the 10th-13th c. with a
description of events in Sweden c. 500 (involving a, possibly
legendary, King Egil, hence the confusion).

My
reply in which I ask for evidence about
Iceland to support his assertions about Iceland.

His
reply, in which he offers evidence about
events that may have occured in Germany some centuries before Iceland
was discovered (from Volsungasaga), plus two wildly misinterpreted
passages from Njalsaga (but at least it really is about events in
Iceland). My favorite bit is his assertion that "these verses tend to
be almost alarmingly literal," which is almost the precise opposite
of the truth, skaldic poems being built up out of layers of
conventional metaphors (kennings). At this point it becomes clear
both that he doesn't know much about Norse literature and that he is
willing to make up facts when convenient.

My
response, in which I point out most of
this, along with one or two other things. At this point the argument
is mostly over, since it has become clear that he has no support for
much of what he has posted and in trying to dig some up is revealing
his lack of knowledge of Icelandic history and literature.

His
response, conceding most of the argument
without actually admitting he was in the wrong.

His
post, where he explains that when he
responded to someone who posted the URL of my article with statements
about "the Friedman view" he wasn't actually talking about my view at
all, but about distorted third hand versions of my work that showed
up on Usenet (plus lots of other stuff).

My
response, pointing out that, while there
are doubtless distorted versions of my work showing up in Usenet
posts, it is clear from his posts that he was claiming to attack my
work (plus lots of other stuff).

[There are more posts in the thread, which you
can find by going to the last one above and then using Deja to follow
the thread, but I think that at this point the central argument was
over. In the sequel, Muir concedes that he has no cites for his claim
that archaeological evidence proves Iceland to have been
extraordinarily violent, and suggests that I email Jesse Byock, a
noted Icelandic scholar, and ask him. I do so, and Byock replies that
he knows of no such evidence, but that there is some (unpublished)
work suggesting the opposite conclusion. I send Muir a copy of
Byock's letter, Muir concedes that his evidence doesn't exist. Muir
notices that Byock is apparently a friend of mine and thinks well of
my work, but doesn't think to connect that to his original claim that
no modern historian takes my views seriously.]

In case there is some problem accessing Google, I have also got the
posts webbed here.
One advantage of this version is that I have used a different color
for what I wrote, which may make it a little easier to follow.

The puzzle for me in this exchange was why Muir
was posting to a public forum confident assertions that weren't true.
My eventual conclusion was that, at least in most cases, he thought
what he was saying probably was true (his central assumption was that
anything true of other Scandinavian societies was probably true of
Iceland, so he didn't have to actually know things about Iceland in
order to assert them). He figured that the people he was arguing with
would probably not call him on his claims, and if they did he could
either fake it or, in the last resort, find the evidence he claimed
to already have.

By the time the argument was over, Muir had
conceded that his initial statement about my work was false (although
he claimed not to have made it, since "Friedman's view" didn't mean
"the view propounded by Friedman in the article whose URL has just
been cited"). He had conceded that his archaeological evidence didn't
exist. He had either conceded or failed to defend all of his claims
about the Icelandic legal system consisting of might makes right. He
had made no attempt to defend his assertion about skaldic poetry.

Yet, so far as I could tell, none of his
supporters had reached the obvious conclusions about him.